In the present day internal combustion engines, the engine carries out a compression function. I have calculated that this compression function is accomplished at a substantial cost in on-board fuel. It is done inefficiently, adiabatically, in a single stage, and in a hot cylinder. Further, fuel is burned (wasted) to do the compression even when no power is needed from the engine, such as while sitting in traffic and coasting. A diesel engine, for example, uses fuel to compress about the same amount of air each stroke at cruise speed at it does while idling in a traffic jam. In land vehicles alone, and in the U.S. alone, I have estimated that approximately 6.7 million barrels of oil are burned per day to accomplish this inefficient and wasteful task (see the calculation in Appendix A below).
The significance of the present invention is that potentially all of this oil can be saved, that is, it need be burned, therefore it need not be imported. It should be noted that it is not just that some of this oil can be saved, by doing the compression more efficiently (in plural stages, with intercooling), for example, but that substantially all of it can be saved by doing the compression with fuel such as coal, which the U.S. has in abundance.
There is prior art on using stored compressed air for starting an internal combustion engine (see for example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,849,324). Stored compressed air is also known for use in overload situations in which it is to be fed into a combustion chamber after combustion to add some extra force. Candelise, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,017,872 shows a compressor driven by the engine for supplying a tank from which compressed air is fed into a combustion chamber during the latter portion of the expansion stroke to help burn previously unburned hydrocarbons. Further, reference can be had to the prior art of record in the six patent applications of applicant incorporated by reference herein and listed in the "Summary" section below.
It is an advantage of the present invention that the need for the U.S. to import oil can be reduced and possibly eliminated.
It is an object of this invention to reduce the fuel consumption of internal combustion engines and to do so with minimum changes in the engine.
It is an object of this invention to improve the mileage (miles per gallon of fuel) of vehicles using internal combustion engines.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an internal combustion engine system in which the fuel-expensive inefficient compression function is eliminated, and in which compressed air, efficiently generated primarily from non-oil fuel is fed from a compressed air tank into the combustion chambers.
It is another object of this invention to reduce the size of internal combustion engines for the same power output; to provide a smoother running internal combustion engine and to reduce the number of cylinders needed for a certain power internal combustion engine.
It is another object and advantage of this invention that when engine power is not needed during running, that fuel is not wasted in carrying out an expensive and unnecessary compression function.